Presidential elections matter, but they are not the whole picture of power.

The decisions that shape your daily life — what your kids learn in school, whether your landlord can evict you, how police behave in your community, whether your vote is easy or hard to cast — are made at every level of government.

That’s a reason to show up everywhere.

Turnout tends to be small — which means your engagement matters more

State and local elections routinely see low turnout. A few hundred engaged voters can decide who runs a school district serving tens of thousands of kids, or a small group of neighbors can flip a city council seat. Your high school stadium can hold the population needed to elect your state legislator. Governors have been chosen by a few thousand votes of difference. Mayors by even less. Yet, no matter who shows up, their ability to shape your lives remains just as strong.

The people who currently dominate low-turnout elections are the ones who figured out that everyone else isn’t paying attention. Like the ones who flood phone lines for a singing contest, they have a strategy for getting what they want. And rarely is their objective to serve your best interests. So, when you start paying attention, it changes the math.

When I served in the state legislature, I saw firsthand how few people it took to force an issue. Yes, there are lobbyists with millions of dollars, but a hundred dedicated activists who rally around a cause can transform outcomes. Maybe not overnight, but certainly over time. Think about what has changed in recent years — from abortion rights to voting rights to criminal justice reform. We who believe in justice stopped believing in our ability to shape the narrative. They didn’t.

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So we elect new champions and embolden them with our presence. How? Bring people with you to the polls. Talk to your neighbors about the races on the ballot before election day. Make it normal in your circle to vote in every election, not just the presidential ones. Become the resident expert on who does what and share what you know.

Know what’s on your ballot before you walk in

Few of us would send our money to a cause without doing a bit of research. However, many are willing to cast ballots without knowing who we’re giving power to — or why. To avoid being surprised, do some research ahead of time by finding your sample ballot online or looking up the candidates. Check if local news or advocacy organizations have done voter guides. The League of Women Voters and Common Cause are great resources, and Ballotpedia can provide some guidance as well.

We often look to our political parties as the shorthand for who we vote for, which is one of their reasons for existence. But many of the most consequential local races happen in spring primaries, November off-years, or special elections. Those are the races where everyone may use the same label, but they view their responsibilities differently. Moreover, across the South and Southwest, Republicans are converting races to nonpartisan in order to game the system. If the jobs didn’t matter, the tricks wouldn’t be necessary. Our job is to treat these jobs and elections like they matter, because they do.

Run for something

If the candidate on the ballot fails to effectively represent your community, find someone who will and help them run (or run yourself). Local offices tend to be accessible for regular people. I ran for the state legislature at age 34, without the backing of a political party or a personal warchest. You do not need a political machine or a lot of money to win a school board race or a city council seat. Good lawyers become local judges without millions in financial resources. Instead, what you need are neighbors who trust you and a willingness to do the work. Seek out candidate training programs or reach out to your county party for guidance on next steps.

Every single election counts

Primaries, general elections and run-offs track the stages of elections. Federal, state and local mark the level of government. However, none of us lead one-dimensional lives, so neither can our politics. Because politics is the term of art we use to describe who can borrow our power. Whether it is the power to decide how high your grocery tax might be or if your local utility can charge you exorbitant rates. Zoning for a data center or a homeless shelter both start in the same meetings. Every one of these decisions is made by someone elected directly or appointed by a person elected to office. These elections count because they affect real people, every day. In most of these contests for power, the margin is small enough that your engagement — and everyone you can bring with you — is the difference.

Recently, in Hungary, small bands of voters showed up and evicted their authoritarian leader. Last year, in New York City, young people and working class folks banded together to elect a new mayor. At home and abroad, local voices are changing the future. Elections decide who speaks for us or who ignores us. Step 9 is about deciding which one we get. So let’s elect the leaders we need — everywhere.

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Resources

Getting Started:

• Vote in every election, including local and off-year elections.

• Research candidates or ballot initiatives, and share with your networks.

Building Momentum:

• Attend candidate forums and debates.

• Phone bank text or canvass for candidates you support.

• Register voters.

• Join local political organizations.

Leadership Development:

• Work with established political organizations and individuals to learn about running for office, campaign management, and voter engagement.

• Protect the right to vote for yourself and others.

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What makes it worse is that the Trump administration isn’t just ignoring them — it’s targeting them.

When the Trump regime began its assault on DEI, most people noticed the attacks on people of color, women, and the LGBTQ+ community. Far fewer noticed what was happening to the disabled. The Department of Energy quietly rescinded long-standing mandates requiring federally funded construction and renovations to be accessible under Section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. At the same time, the administration hollowed out the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Education — the office responsible for enforcing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law guaranteeing children with disabilities a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible.

Whether it’s blocking access to buildings or gutting protections for students, the attacks are real and they are happening right now, largely out of public scrutiny.

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The America we deserve has never been only about race or gender. It’s about who gets fair access and opportunity. Democracy is about shared power, and competitive authoritarian regimes always reveal themselves by how they treat the most vulnerable among us.

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I can’t wait to continue sharing more with you all and hearing about all the ways you’re reclaiming democracy in your communities.

Now, on to this week’s discussion…

When things feel as broken as they do today, it’s easy to feel like politics is something that happens to you, not something you can actually touch. But the level of government closest to your needs — your city council, your county commission, your school board or state legislature — this is where so much of daily life gets decided.

• Zoning

• Schools

• Policing

• Public health

• Worker protections

Even better, those officials are often far more accessible than a member of Congress or a president. Rather than a trek to D.C. to get attention, sometimes all it takes is a trip next door or to the grocery store. Democracy is a fancy term for shared power, and the point of that power is making life better. When I served in the Georgia House of Representatives, I learned more from my constituents bringing me their troubles or ideas than I did from the lobbyists who filled the halls. My constituents were the ones who spurred me to pass legislation that gave grandparents raising grandchildren the right to sign permission slips and enroll them in clubs. To push a bill supporting the unemployed to gain entrepreneurial skills. To provide an option for a homeowner to cure a foreclosure and bring their debt current. Common sense ideas that came from folks too used to be ignored. We get the government we demand, even when it’s in the hands of those who despise democracy.

This is where Step 8 comes in: Engage. Not just by voting — though, please vote — but by showing up, making demands, building relationships, and running things yourself when the rules let you.

Call, show up, and keep showing up

Find out who represents you at the city, county, and state level. Their office numbers, their town halls, their public schedules. Call their offices, show up to their events, and bring other people with you. If five people coordinate around an issue and each finds five friends, that’s a seachange in motion.

Elected officials track constituent contact, so a flood of calls on a specific issue moves them — especially at the local and state level where staff is small and one hundred calls feels like a lot. Be kind, and courteous, but specific when you reach out. Name the policy, ask for a commitment, and follow up.

If you’ve never done this before, it can feel awkward the first time, but once you get into the habit of it, it gets easier. I can promise you, as I learned from the handful of grandparents who crowded into my office to ask for help, showing up works.

Go to the meetings

City council meetings, school board meetings, and county commissioner hearings are all open to the public and most people never go. That means the people who do show up have enormous influence over what happens. As a college student, I attended zoning committee meetings to better understand why my college sat next to liquor stores rather than bookstores. I didn’t get change immediately, but I learned how the system worked. Knowledge really is power.

Get on the agenda for public comment, and bring a friend. Coordinate with other community members so multiple people speak to the same issue from different angles.

Check your local government’s website for meeting schedules. Many now have hybrid or virtual options, which makes it even easier to participate without taking too much time off work.

Push for proactive legislation

Work with your elected officials to shape good policy that addresses real problems in your community. You don’t need to come with a technical fix, but you should come with a specific demand of the problem that needs solving. Legislative offices will be able to take that demand and turn it into actionable items: a tenant protection ordinance, a transparency requirement, a local minimum wage, a sanctuary policy, or a public health measure.

Connect with local advocacy organizations who are already doing this work — they often have model legislation ready to go and need community voices to push it forward. Ask your council member or state rep to champion it. Help build the coalition that makes it politically possible for them to act.

Do it yourself — ballot initiatives and public petitions

In many states and cities, you don’t have to wait for an elected official to act. You can go directly to voters.

Ballot initiatives let you put a policy question directly on the ballot if you gather enough signatures. Public petitions can force hearings, referendums, or official responses. Citizen-led campaigns have successfully passed minimum wage increases, expanded voting access, protected tenant rights, and more — often in places where the legislature wouldn’t move.

Look up the rules in your county and city or visit the Movement Advancement Project to find out what your state allows. The thresholds vary, and some are more accessible than others. Find out what’s possible where you live, and connect with people who’ve done it before. Organizations that run these campaigns can walk you through the process.

Consider running yourself

School boards, water boards, city councils, local judgeships — many of these seats go uncontested or are decided by a few hundred votes. If you’ve been paying attention, talking to your neighbors, and showing up to meetings, you may be more prepared than you think.

The only requirement is to be someone who understands what your community needs and is willing to show up and fight for it. Many of the most effective local officials started exactly where you are.

Even if you’re not ready to run yourself, you can recruit and support candidates who are, knock doors, donate a few dollars. Or perhaps help someone get their name on a ballot. If you’re up for it, visit Run For Something.

A few things to keep in mind

Local elections happen on off-cycle dates that most people miss — primaries in spring, special elections scattered throughout the year. Put them in your calendar now and bring people with you to vote.

Relationships matter at this level. The official you call repeatedly, the neighbor you organize with, or the council member you help elect can all become real working relationships that make things happen, so invest in them.

Policy moves slowly, but the people who stay in the room, keep showing up, and keep pushing are the ones who eventually win. That can be you.

Resources

Getting Started:

• Learn about the legislative process and laws at local, state, and federal levels.

• Attend town halls and public hearings.

• Call and set up a meeting with your local, state, or federal elected officials on issues you care about. Even if it’s with their staff, it matters. Report out your meetings with your group chat.

Building Momentum:

• Meet regularly with your representatives or their staff.

• Organize constituent meetings and lobby days.

• Testify at hearings and public comment periods.

• Review annual budgets to ensure funds are supporting community values.

Leadership Development:

• Partner with experienced advocates to develop comprehensive policy, advocacy, and ballot initiative campaigns.

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Catch Up

This Week on Our Podcast, Assembly Required

We talk a lot about the federal government, and for good reason — it’s the common thread binding the nation together. But the pieces that make America whole are the states and territories. They decide education, the economy, and who runs elections. For most of American history, the quality of your citizenship has depended on your zip code.

That disparity hasn’t gone away. If anything, the divides are more stark and the consequences more critical. A woman in Georgia or Texas can die from an ectopic pregnancy because of state-level abortion bans. California, Mississippi, New York, and Oklahoma still allow child marriage in 2026. From environmental protections to affordable housing to how we treat the mentally ill, states matter — and who runs them matters enormously.

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I served in the Georgia General Assembly for 11 years, seven as House Minority Leader. As a Democrat in a state Republicans controlled entirely, it would have been easy to give up before getting started. Instead I reminded my colleagues that I’d been a minority my whole life and was very good at it. I used that role to protect pre-K from Republican erasure, block water pollution legislation, champion criminal justice reform, and stop the largest tax increase on working families in the state’s history — with nothing but a spreadsheet and a map. More often than not, my job was to stop stupid, or at least slow it down.

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But as authoritarianism spreads from Washington into statehouses across the country, stopping stupid is no longer enough. This is about defeating people who want to dismantle democracy at every level. The states are a vital weapon in that fight — and the laboratories where we can still get good things done. They’re all around us. So are the people we need to elect to run them.

Catch Up on Assembly Required

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Join our 10 Steps Campaign to learn more about how you can fight authoritarianism in your community.

Authoritarians want us to feel alone.

They want us confused about what words mean, cut off from our neighbors, too exhausted or too scared to push back. It’s their strategy: divide people, flood them with noise, make them doubt what they know, and they stop organizing, showing up for each other, and eventually go quiet.

Step 7: Deny in our 10 Steps to Freedom and Power is about refusing to go quiet. Denying means staying loud, connected, and making it harder — every single day — for those in power to pretend that what’s happening is normal business.

Don’t Let Them Twist Our Language

When language gets twisted, authoritarians grow more powerful. That’s why it’s important to call things what they are and not let them take ownership of our language. Take for example, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or ‘DEI’.

• Diversity: Means all people.

• Equity: Means fair access to opportunity.

• Inclusion: Means respect for belonging and participation in the American dream.

Authoritarians in America have attempted to demonize all three of those words and to pervert their meaning as insults. But my question is: which one of those values don’t you like? I support all three, so I talk about DEI. Everywhere. In conversations with those who benefit from the range of programs — from the Voting Rights Act to the Americans with Disabilities Act to Title I and public education. And with CEOs and small business owners and conservatives who didn’t realize DEI includes millions of U.S. Veterans who lost their jobs in the anti-DEI fervor. By raising the issue, using the term, I spark conversation and, when it works, understanding. Hiding will not protect us. It simply clears the field.

When we adopt their framing, we accept the premise. When we avoid the language, we signal that there was something wrong. There wasn’t. Protecting the vulnerable and correcting centuries of harm is good. Expanding pathways to the American Dream is good. Whether it’s DEI or democracy or immigration or gun safety, we cannot change our language to change their minds. Instead, we must speak up and believe in our right to do so. That’s why it is so important to use our own words, and encourage the people around us to do the same. Language is one of the first things they come for — don’t hand it over.

The Power of Community

What we say matters. What we do matters too. In defense of democracy, defending communities is the frontline of resistance. Our neighbors are part of our rapid response network when an emergency occurs. Yet, a crisis is the worst time to meet our allies. Preparation comes from engaging early, and getting to know our compatriots. Competitive authoritarianism, the stage of devolution we are in right now, thrives on fraying our community bonds. They want us to feel isolated, and to believe that we’ve already been forsaken. We can defeat this mission by building community and connection. Doing so looks different for everyone. In the digital age, we can create group chats to share news and resources or conduct regular check-ins. For others, where the personal is possible, consider hosting a dinner, starting a book club or organizing a neighborhood potluck. Food usually works to get conversation started. The point is to find the people in your area who are paying attention (or want to) and stay close to them.

It won’t be easy. But community is infrastructure that allows people to survive hard times. The more connected you are — to real people, in real life — the harder you are to isolate and the more effective you become at denying authoritarianism power.

Practice nonviolent civil disobedience

Over the past year and a half, we’ve seen how powerful nonviolent disobedience can be. Tens of millions of people have shown up to protests, attended town halls, and organized walkouts, sit-ins, phone banks, or letter campaigns. This is an effective way of denying authoritarians their power because it allows us to use our bodies, our voice, or our presence, to refuse to cooperate.

Last week, our 10 Steps Campaign, alongside our co-lead the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and many other partner orgs, showed up in Washington, D.C. We came together for a Day of Action to demand the end of family and child detention. Our coalition crossed ideology and theories of change, but we had a common bond: we will not sit idly while kids languish in prison camps across the country. By knitting together diverse organizations, coordinating to lift up each other’s work and centering children and the shared act of reading, we told those in power that we would not go away. We also showed up in local district offices and online — insisting on action. Policy will not change overnight, but part of Step 7 is denying ourselves victory because we didn’t achieve immediate change. Salvaging democracy is a long haul endeavor, and we must use every failure to remind each other what we can be.

Here are some more resources

Getting Started:

• Maintain connections across political and social differences.

• Practice communal care and mutual support.

• Use inclusive language, support DEI, challenge harmful rhetoric and refuse to participate in harmful systems.

• Refuse to self-censor under threat or pressure, especially people in positions of privilege, authority, or leadership, and declining to participate in loyalty pledges or oaths.

• Refuse to participate in surveillance or data collection.

Building Momentum:

• Challenge exclusionary policies in your workplace or institutions.

• Organize community building events that center diversity.

• Refuse to use euphemisms or dog whistles that mask injustice.

Leadership Development:

• Partner with and learn from established organizations to develop community-controlled alternatives, cooperatives and mutual aid networks.

We don’t have to do the same thing, but we can all do something. Pick an action that you feel comfortable with, and do that consistently. Deny fear its place. Remember: we’re not doing this alone. Across our cities and states, our workplaces, and our neighborhoods, there are people paying attention and looking for each other. We launched the 10 Steps Campaign because we know they are out there, looking for us. Looking for you. Our job is to find them, because every act of insistence makes it a little easier for the next person to do the same and a little harder for authoritarians to take a stronger hold.

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In Case You Missed It

Yesterday, I testified in front of the Tennessee Senate Judiciary Committee against Tennessee’s new congressional map, which would eliminate the only Democrat-held seat in the state.

⬇️ Watch below ⬇️

⬇️ Or read my testimony below ⬇️

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I spoke with KUOW about the impact of the Callais decision and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court.

Check Out This Week’s Episode of Assembly Required

This week we spoke to the amazing about her life of activism, how we can resist against Donald Trump, and insist on more.

Here’s what I said:

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. Good morning.

My name is Stace…

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Defunding is designed not just to strip us of ability — it’s meant to strip us of our interests and make education impossible. We have to remember that when HBCUs were created, they were built by people who had been enslaved just weeks before they became students. While land-grant institutions were invested in by the government, HBCUs were not given the resources necessary to make education truly possible.

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Leveraging the co…

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This is a timely and necessary discussion about the impact of the Trump regime’s cruel immigration policies and what it means for families navigating an already difficult system. If you’re looking to better understand the people affected by these cruel policies—and what can be done about it—this is a conversation you’ll want to check out and share.

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